


it gets the worst at night

by glitteratiglue



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 11:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4918504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's how it goes: Natasha sometimes shares a bed with Steve. It's not what it sounds like.</p><p>(In which there are Colombian drug lords, awkward boners, cuddly super-soldiers and the Avengers are all giant dorks.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it gets the worst at night

**Author's Note:**

> Natasha and Steve, aka my ultimate BROTP. And cuddling.
> 
> Triggers: brief mention of violence, canon-typical for Natasha's backstory.

Here's how it goes: Natasha sometimes shares a bed with Steve. It's not what it sounds like.

***

She flicks a knife at the moving target and rolls forward, narrowly avoiding a hit from the laser beam. It's been a long, horrible day of debriefings and this is how Natasha has chosen to unwind, in the state-of-the-art knife range in Tony Stark's gym complex. She's still sore with cuts and bruises from the battle, with bandages stuck to an arm and ankle, but pain has never bothered her. It's better than counting the hours in bed while she can't sleep.

The program halts. Gracefully, she flips onto her feet to find Captain America in front of her. He's barefoot, clad only in a t-shirt and sweatpants, and looks strangely vulnerable out of his cartoonish uniform.

“Hi, Natasha,” Steve says, flashing that placid, nice-guy smile she would have sworn was an act she hadn't been thoroughly convinced of Steve Rogers' nauseating righteousness over the past couple of weeks.

“Hi yourself.” Natasha brushes a wisp of hair back that has escaped from her ponytail, regards him cooly.

Steve shifts from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. It would be so easy to fuck with him, but even Natasha isn’t mean enough to do that.

“You have trouble sleeping, too?” Steve asks, hands in his pockets, and he looks down. It's a nervous tell, and oddly endearing - if Natasha were the sort of person to be endeared by such things, that is.

“Always,” she says; it sounds as enigmatic as she means it to. She grabs her water bottle from the side and takes a long drink; now that she's stopped, she's aware of how fatigued she is, the fancy Stark Industries heat-tech gymwear sticking to her skin with sweat. “You?”

It's not really a question, because of  _course_  Captain America has trouble sleeping. Natasha has seen how everyone looks at him, the paragon of hope and patriotism and virtue. They don't see what she does: that Steve is broken, out of step with everything and with no idea who he is. Natasha knows a little about what that feels like.

“Indigestion. Don't know if shawarma agrees with me.” Steve shrugs.

Natasha smiles faintly and tries not to think about the real reason she's here at two am, killing imaginary targets. She’d left Clint sleeping earlier, spent an hour on the phone to Laura being falsely cheerful and reassuring her he’d be fine, while every part of Natasha wanted to break and her thoughts rang with images of her own unmaking in the Red Room.

People don't see Steve as broken. They don't see the dark inside Natasha either, how she was systematically shattered and pieced back together in a way that didn't fit.

Sometimes the roaring quiet of an empty bedroom is more than she can bear, and it's then she'll turn to Clint. It's not that Natasha is cuddly, far from it - despite the way Laura laughed and laughed when Clint told her how he and Natasha snuggled in hotels around the world on their missions - but the feel of someone in bed beside her is grounding, on those nights when she feels like she could crawl out of her skin. Clint knows it too, and though he might tease Natasha about it, he'll never turn her down when she squeezes into his bed.

But Natasha can't be with Clint tonight, can't burden him with her demons when he’s already got his own to wrestle with. It's not like she's looking for a substitute, but Steve is a good guy; something tells her he might not be up to spending the night alone, either.

“I was thinking about trying to get some sleep, actually," Natasha says. She walks over to Steve, pretends not to notice the way he shrinks into himself when she comes near. “Want to join?”

“Um,” Steve says after a beat, and his eyes dart towards the door. “There's a lot of things about this century I don't exactly understand, but in my day, if a dame invited you to her room, then -”

Natasha laughs softly, enjoying the red flush creeping up Steve's face. “Calm down, Rogers. I don't want to _sleep_ with you.”

Now, that's not entirely true. He's a fine specimen of human being, to be sure. But if Natasha wants to get laid, she can get laid. This isn't about that.

She doesn't need another friend: she knows well enough that trusting the wrong people can get you killed. But a bedmate would be welcome, and Steve looks like he has nice arms that do a great job of holding you tight.

Steve breathes out a sigh of obvious relief. “Can we just pretend I never said that?”

“Sure.” Natasha gathers up her towel. “I'll just be a sec in the shower.”

She watches Steve push his toes against the carpet and pauses, waiting.

“How about my room?” he says, with a shy smile. “The bed's big - from what I hear from all you SHIELD types, the standard quarters can be a little cramped.”

Natasha nods. “Okay.”

Steve has a California king bed with the softest sheets, and Natasha feels like she could drown in its  _bigness._  She could live in this bed, and it's almost a disappointment when Steve gets in beside her, his weight tilting the mattress.

She's borrowed a t-shirt and sweatpants from him. For a minute or two, they lie side by side in the dark, listening to each other breathe.

Then Natasha shuffles closer to Steve, until she's pressed into his side. He tenses.

“Hey,” she whispers. “It's okay. Sometimes it's just nice to have someone hold you.”

She hears Steve make a barely audible sound that might be the beginnings of a sob, but he locks it away quickly. He's good at that, she's noticed - at letting others see only what he wants them to see. Natasha sees it: Steve is lonely and empty, and doesn’t want anyone to know it.

His hand presses at her shoulder, insinuating her to move, and she rolls onto her side, lets him put an arm around her and spoon her.

“This okay?” Steve asks, quiet and hesitant. He's still tense: maybe this is as close as he's been to a woman, ever. That strikes Natasha as a terribly sad thought.

“Yeah. It's nice,” she tells him, feels him relax against her. Steve is warm against her back, and it's easier than Natasha first hoped to forget about Clint, sedated to quiet the terror in his thoughts; the headache of reports she still has to file; the screams filling the New York streets while they battled the Chitauri.

When Steve wakes not long after with a nightmare, sweating and clutching at the sheets, Natasha doesn't say a word.  She strokes his hair and keeps Captain America's secrets when the day breaks.

They understand each other, is all.

***

It's three months before it happens again.

After a few days operating undercover on the outskirts of Bogotá, they've captured a Colombian drug lord with valuable SHIELD intel on terrorist groups operating in the region.

It's Natasha's tenth mission with Steve, and so far, she's been grudgingly impressed by him. Captain America might be awkward and shy, but when it comes to missions he has a sharp, tactical mind and utter focus. Plus he's pretty handy with that shield. It's not quite as symbiotic as her partnership with Clint, who knows what she's about to do even before she thinks it, but it's pretty good.

It's the kind of working relationship that keeps you alive, and when you work in espionage, that's no small thing. Steve still isn't great at being undercover, but he's learning.

Natasha asks Steve to wait outside while she interrogates their target - he gives her a curious look, but then, he understands there are things she's comfortable with that he isn't. Luckily, Rojas breaks quickly, with only a few choice words and without the need for anything more unpleasant.

Steve raises an eyebrow at her when she comes out of the room after only five minutes - he looks either impressed or slightly terrified, and really, Natasha doesn't care which one. She flashes him a glittering smile.

They secure their target for the night. When Natasha calls it in, Maria tells her they have to wait until tomorrow for an extraction team. She weighs it up. They could sleep in the open, but that's hardly wise, not on the edge of FARC territory.

In the end, Natasha knocks on the door of a house in the village, puts on a doe-eyed expression and the best fake Southern US accent she can muster. By the time she’s finished explaining tearfully how she and her fiancé (Steve's hand tenses in hers, at that) got lost and their car broke down, the woman is nodding and pointing to a mud storeroom at the back of her house just to get rid of them.

“You're good,” Steve tells her as they dump their packs on the floor and survey the surroundings. The shelter with mud walls is small, possibly rodent-infested and there are bags of unopened cornmeal everywhere, but it'll do for the night.

She grins at him. “Thanks. When you've had as many covers as I have, you get used to playing a part.”

He's staring at her curiously. “So is this you, right now?”

“Maybe.” Natasha gives him a half-smile and starts checking through her pack to account for all its contents.

“This seems like the sort of place you could get Chagas disease,” Steve says suddenly.

“Wow, someone's been on the internet,” Natasha says without looking up from her phone: she's making sure the perimeter is secure before they bed down for the night.

“It's a real threat in South America, Romanoff. It's spread by assassin bugs” -at that, Natasha looks up at Steve and quirks an eyebrow- “and I don't think it would affect me because of the serum, but I wouldn't want you to get sick.”

Steve looks at her with a concerned-puppy expression, but there's a hint of Captain America's steel in his tone; she isn't getting away with this.

“Well aren’t you just  _adorable_  when you worry.” Natasha laughs. She digs into her pack and pulls out an enormous net, unfolding it in front of her. “There. Think this mosquito net should work. Tight-weave nylon, impregnated with insecticide, built for tropical climates. Now will you get off my back, Rogers?”

His nostrils flare. “Fine.”

Natasha secures the net and Steve tucks their sleeping bags into it, arranging them as best he can into a makeshift mattress.

It's so  _hot_ , and her thin shirt is starting to feel pretty disgusting, soaked through and clinging to her sweat-damp skin. Maybe it would be wiser to keep their skin covered on account of insects or rats, but in this prickling heat, she can’t bear to have fabric smothering her.

Modesty's not something that ever really occurs to Natasha. She slips off her shirt and tugs down her pants, slightly enjoying the way Steve gapes a little before he turns away.

“I'm sorry,” Steve mumbles, still facing away from her with hands resting on the makeshift windowsill.

Natasha smothers a laugh and crawls into the little space beneath the net. “You can move, you know, Steve. And I don't mind if you strip off, too. It's ridiculously hot.”

“I couldn't do that,” Steve tells her earnestly. He comes to kneel in front of the net, looking determinedly at a spot over Natasha’s shoulder so he won't have to deal with the fact she's only wearing a bra and panties. “Wouldn't be right, around a lady.”

She huffs out a sigh. “Would you get over yourself already? I think I can manage to control myself around the impressive abs of Captain America.”

Steve laughs a little, brushes a bead of sweat from his forehead, and she can see he's perspiring like crazy. He sighs, giving in and pulls his sodden t-shirt over his head, takes off his jeans and folds everything neatly, like the giant nerd that he is.

He freezes. “How'd you get that scar?”

Steve gestures to her stomach, to the ugly, two-inch scar she got in Odessa from a Soviet slug, no rifling.

Natasha thinks of the screech of tires and cold, cold eyes that stared at her with utter blankness - eyes that still haunt her dreams, to this day.

Outwardly, she gives him a broad smile and says, “I'll tell you the story another time, handsome.”

Steve's eyes narrow, but he accepts Natasha's obvious bullshitting, and she's grateful for that. She could tell him, but it's not like he'd believe her anyway; hardly anyone does. Sometimes she thinks she dreamt it. Other times, she thinks about going looking for the Winter Soldier - thing is, she knows others have tried, and they've all mysteriously disappeared. Best not to think about it.

“Right, come on then,” says Natasha, shifting up on the makeshift sleeping-bag mattress and patting the space beside her. She frowns, considering. “Barton and I can normally squeeze under this just fine, but I'm not sure your big ass is gonna fit.”

There's a pout from Steve, but then he grins and says “Then we'll just have to snuggle up.”

If it were anyone else, it might come off as creepy, but Steve just about pulls it off with a hint of shy cuteness.

He squashes his bulk in beside her, all hot, sweaty skin in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. It tickles Natasha that this is probably what a lot of girls and boys dream of, being this close to the fine ass of Captain America.

Underneath it all, Natasha knows that despite Steve’s good looks and heroic record, he shies away from attention of any kind, that the confident persona of Captain America is a mask to hide the shaking hands and palpitations he's been plagued with all his life; the serum couldn't fix that. Nobody can fix that except Steve, but he's doing his best. That's all anyone can do, in the end.

“Sorry. I'm kind of sweaty and gross,” Steve says nervously, ducking his head.

Natasha probably doesn't smell great either, so she doesn't give it much thought. Anyway, Steve smells kind of - manly, maybe? or woodsy? - and the sweat hasn't had time to get stale.

“It's okay.” She lies back and he aligns his body with her spine, uncomfortably warm in the stifling heat but also weirdly comforting.

It's probably making them hotter overall, curling up together, but Natasha lets Steve press his face into her shoulder. She reaches for his hand to pull his arm over top of her. There's an accidental boob-grope, for which Steve apologises profusely, and then they settle down to try and get some sleep.

Apparently super-soldiers are the equivalent of a dose of Nyquil, because Natasha is out for the count until morning. She wakes up with Steve drooling on her shoulder and elbows him in the face.

“Ow,” he says miserably. “What was that for?”

“Look down.” Natasha pointedly drops her gaze to the tent in Steve's shorts.

Steve groans and goes about as red as she's ever seen him. “It's the  _morning,_ ” he says hotly.

“Relax. I'm just fucking with you, Rogers.” She grins and shuffles out of her sleeping bag to retrieve her clothes and grab a much-needed drink of water.

Natasha bites the inside of her cheek so as not to laugh while Steve make a grab for his clothes. He gets dressed so fast he nearly causes himself an unfortunate injury with the zipper of his jeans. At that, Natasha gives up and bursts out laughing, spitting water all over the floor while Steve gives her a death-ray stare.

Sometimes she thinks she likes messing with Steve Rogers a little too much. It's a compliment, coming from Natasha.  She only messes with people she cares about.

But then, she sees what others don't. Beneath Captain America's stolid, dependable exterior is a man with a warm heart and a dry sense of humour that leaves her in stitches. Steve’s got flaws, sure - his old-fashioned sensibilities when it comes to women, his bravery to the point of idiocy that might have got him killed on a couple of missions if it hadn't been for Natasha - but deep down, he really is as  _good_  as they say.

She files away a 'morning wood' joke for later: it'll be worth it, just to see Steve blush like a schoolboy in front of a bunch of SHIELD agents.

From where Natasha's standing, Steve Rogers is alright. He's decent. She can trust him, maybe.

***

_The woman is snivelling, crying, her tendrils of blonde hair already slick with red. She is young, but nobody is too young to die; Natasha learned that truth early on, when it was the only way to stay alive._

_“Please, please, don’t.”_

_Natasha doesn’t listen. Her sharp, gleaming knife meets the white skin of her target’s throat and pushes – what they never tell you is that it takes pressure to slice through skin and subcutaneous fat and sinew; it’s a sick, springy give that feels nothing like butter – and red runs all over her hands._

The moment Natasha slips from the dream into waking, she’s reaching for the flick knife she always keeps concealed at her hip, opening it.

“Woah,” comes the deep rumble of Steve’s voice in her ear. “Easy there.”

Operating on pure instinct, she whirls around and aims the knife right at him.

“Natasha,” says Steve, managing to appear still and calm while something shakes in his voice. “It’s me. It’s Steve. You’re okay.”

Natasha blinks, trying not to think about how she must look right now, sweat-slick hair hanging limply in her face and pointing a knife at Steve with shaking hands and blank eyes.

They’re in a motel in Ohio, en route to investigate a possible 084 (it’s been a slow month for SHIELD, apparently, for Captain America and Black Widow to end up on such a mundane mission, looking into an unidentified and potentially extra-terrestrial object).

The bad nights come so rarely these days, they catch Natasha off guard when they do. There are things she’s done that Steve can never,  _never_  know, atrocities in her past than even Clint isn’t privy to.

Steve doesn’t even look afraid – just concerned, and possibly wary, which she can’t blame him for.

“Bad dream?”

She lowers the knife and exhales a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Steve reaches out a hand and pauses – he’s waiting for her permission to touch. It’s a small thing, but it means a lot that Steve notices and remembers these things about her.

She nods, lets him stroke her hair with gentle movements. It feels good, and the trembling under her skin soon starts to quiet down.

“Do you always sleep with a knife?” There’s a trace of amusement in Steve’s voice, but she can hear what’s underneath it, the cold horror at discovering another jagged shard of her past. She’s told him a few things – more than what’s in her file, at least – and he hasn’t judged her or pitied her yet.

Natasha flinches. “Yes. Does that scare you?”

He smiles enough to make the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I’ve known you a while now, Romanoff. Would I be here if I spooked easy?”

“I think we’ve already established that you lack a lot of self-preservation instincts”- Steve makes a grumbling noise, then –“so I’m not sure I can trust your judgement on that.”

“I’m not scared of you, Natasha. Get used to it,” Steve says - all cute Brooklyn twang - and he’s holding his arms open, inviting her closer.

In spite of herself, in spite of  _everything_ , Natasha smiles.

“You should be,” she says darkly, but she’s already burrowing into the warm circle of his arms.

The 084 turns out to be nothing, but Steve - he’s something.

He’s a friend.

***

After Steve gets out of the hospital, he comes to stay at Avengers Tower. Natasha knows Steve can't go back to his DC apartment - it's difficult enough for  _her_ to be there, imagining Nick bleeding out all over the bare floorboards - so she fetches some stuff for him.

The same night, she goes to Steve's room, already dressed in the Black Widow pyjamas Tony got her for her birthday. He lets her in without a word.

There are graphite smudges all over his fingers and a sketchbook and pencil on the desk. Natasha steps closer, sees the beginnings of a sketch of dark hair and a metal-plated arm.

“Oh, Steve,” she breathes, her throat tight. No platitudes or reassurances seem adequate.

Steve’s jaw clenches. Then his shoulders slump and he starts to cry right where he’s standing - heavy, wracking sobs that shake his body. Natasha has never seen Steve cry before, but she saw the hope fade from his eyes the second he realised their Winter Soldier was his friend. Over the past few weeks, Steve’s kept it together, but Natasha knows better. She’s read the report, knows Captain America's shield was found at the bottom of the Potomac; he  _never_  drops it on purpose.

Steve never expected to wake up, and that's the part that gets Natasha.

She draws Steve into her arms and holds him tightly, lets him soak her shoulder with hot tears.

“They had him, Natasha,” he murmurs brokenly against her hair. “They had him all that time, and what they did -”

“I know, I know,” she says, stroking his hair as Steve dissolves into noisy sobs again.

And Natasha does know. She knows what it feels like to have every part of who you are dissembled, manipulated until you have no idea what’s real and what isn’t. What Steve can't accept is the possibility that too much damage has been done for him to ever recover his friend; she doesn't have the heart to tell him that.

Everyone breaks, with enough pressure and time. It's a wonder it took Captain America this long.

“I should have looked for him.” Steve says after a while, lifting his head from her shoulder. They’re sitting on the edge of his bed, Natasha curled up in his lap, her arms still wrapped around Steve like she can hold all the pieces of him together.

“Steve, you didn't know,” Natasha says quietly.

She isn't far from crying herself, but it’s borne of anger rather than anything else. What she feels is overwhelming hatred for HYDRA, for taking every last fragment of who Steve is and leaving a shell of a man in his place.

“You couldn't have known.”

“I'm going after him.” Steve's eyes are red-rimmed, but he looks grimly determined; it worries her.

“Steve,” Natasha says warningly, reaches out to rest a hand on his. “He's dangerous. We don't know what he remembers, if anything. He might not even want to be found.”

He looks down at her hand and squeezes it gratefully. “He'll want  _me_ to find him," Steve says, not a trace of doubt in his voice, and Natasha envies him for that, for still being able to believe so completely in Bucky even after everything that's happened.

"Just promise me you won't do it alone," she says carefully.

"I promise. I'll take backup.”

“At least wait for the file. They should get it to me soon.”

“Okay.” Steve nods, rubs at his damp eyes with the heel of his free hand. “I should probably try and get some sleep.” There's uncertainty in his voice.

“Want me to stay?” asks Natasha, brushing her thumb over his knuckles.

It's her congressional witch-hunt hearing tomorrow, and Natasha would prefer not to think about it, because she knows there's a possibility she may have to disappear quietly afterwards.

“Please.”

This time, it's Natasha who holds Steve, her face pressed into his back, breathing in the scent of his soap and sweat while her fingers trace soothing patterns on his forearm.

She's woken by the sound of Steve crying. He's shaking, moaning softly into the pillow with every sob. She can barely make out what he's saying, but most of the words sound like  _“Bucky”._

There are tears on Natasha's cheeks, and for once she doesn't care: Steve's too out of it to notice. She makes circles on his back with her hand until he eventually quiets.

Neither of them get much sleep that night.

***

After Sokovia, Natasha helps Steve go off the grid for a while.

Bruce is nowhere to be found, and it's not as if she didn't expect that. Still, she needs something to take her mind off it.

Chasing their cold case seems like a welcome distraction, even if it could end with an encounter with a murderous ex-Soviet assassin - which is why it's probably a good thing that Steve has recruited another murderous ex-Soviet assassin to help him track down whatever's left of Bucky Barnes.

Sam has a lot going on at the VA, so he sits this one out. Natasha and Steve take another trip to Eastern Europe: Odessa, this time. It sends a frisson up her spine just being in the city, but thankfully, they don't go anywhere near the road where she almost lost her life.

Steve is profusely grateful for her help, and she knows he wouldn't ask her if there were anyone else he could trust more. Natasha is glad to aid in him in any way she can, despite the knot in her stomach when she thinks about the fact they are looking for a man who tried to kill her twice.

There's a promising lead on a HYDRA base just a few miles west of the city. They check into a small SHIELD safehouse on the tenth floor of an old apartment building, overlooking Schevchenko Park: it's basic, but it'll do for the night.

Most of the time, Natasha is perfectly happy to sleep alone. Still, when the time comes for them to go to bed, there isn't any question about whether Steve will follow her into her bedroom and curl up beside her.

In the narrow double bed, Steve's breath is hot against her neck, one of his hands resting on top of hers, rubbing gentle circles over her knuckles.

“Thank you for helping me,” Steve says quietly, presses a kiss to her hair.

“We'll find him, Steve. I promise,” Natasha says into the darkness, and she doesn't miss the way Steve shakes against her.

“I'm sorry you didn't find him,” Steve replies, and they both know he's talking about Bruce.

They're both mourning someone they loved ( _love)._

* * *

Ten months after Odessa, Natasha finds herself back in Steve's bed.

It's been a long time since they did this, and a lot has changed since then.

The day they'd found Bucky Barnes in a flea-pit hostel on the outskirts of Odessa, Natasha had watched Steve's world stop turning, had seen that Bucky had always been at the centre of it. It made her heart ache to see the way Steve and Bucky looked at each other, with seventy-plus years of love and longing - and if Natasha was jealous, it wasn't from wanting Steve for herself, but from seeing that Steve still had a wide open heart and trusted people, when she'd long since given up on that - and she had resolved to give them space, to step back and let Steve find who he was in a world where Bucky had come back to him.

There's been enough to keep her busy, after all; HYDRA hadn’t just gone away, and Black Widow was needed for a number of covert intelligence ops where discretion and a high body count were the orders of the day. When Natasha has nothing else, at least she’s always got her specific skill set to fall back on.

Steve's kept in touch with her over the past few months, kept her updated with Bucky's progress. There have been hard times along the way, Natasha knows - Bucky went missing for two weeks and surfaced in a diner in Wisconsin, saying he just felt like going off the map and not understanding the heartache he'd put Steve through; he'd once tried to strangle Steve with the metal arm during a particularly vivid nightmare; he was afraid of cats, but nobody knew why.

These days, things have improved: Bucky is going to daily therapy and now spends most of his time on hobbies, old and new – dancing has been a pretty successful one, but the less said about his experiments in crocheting and pickling, the better.

A couple of months ago, Natasha came back and started to spend some time around Avengers Tower again. Though she could never say it, she’d  _missed_  Steve. 

It's surprising how much Natasha has grown to like Bucky over the past few months, considering he used to be the stuff of her nightmares. They've got plenty in common, due to the fact he was forced to adopt the culture and language of her motherland. Bucky takes his tea black, with sweet cherries, just like she does, and he talks her language as well as he speaks with his New York accent. He knows all of the best spy hangouts in Eastern Europe and can spar with Natasha for hours in the gym (she can still knock him to the mat, super-assassin or not). Bucky is better with knives, but one day Natasha is determined to beat him; she's working on it.

Sometimes Steve even looks a little jealous, which is cute. But Natasha just likes to see Steve smiling, and he hasn't stopped since Bucky turned a corner and started to remember who he was.

So here Natasha is, stretched out on Steve's bed with Steve and Bucky in it, lazy and far too comfortable to move. They'd invited her over for a film noir marathon, and when the credits rolled on _The Big Sleep_ , nobody had bothered to move and Bucky had casually suggested that Natasha should stay. She'd said yes.

“Is this weird? I feel like it's weird,” says Steve, rolling on to one elbow.

Natasha glances around from her place on the pillows, considering the question. Steve's on one side, Bucky on the other and she’s in the middle. It could be weird, but it doesn't feel it.

“Think I can handle it, fellas,” she tells them.

“Hoping for something more exciting, Rogers?” Bucky says with an easy grin, and Natasha gives him a sharp look. “Alright, alright.” He holds up his hands. “Just kidding, Natasha. No funny stuff, promise.”

With a snort, Natasha gets out of bed and digs through Steve's drawers for a pair of her favourite comfy old sweatpants and a t-shirt. When she gets back from the bathroom, Steve and Bucky are comfortably curled up under the covers like a pair of sunbathing cats, but they've left a gap between them that she slots into perfectly.

Bucky swaps sides so she won't get cold from his metal arm, and anyway, Natasha knows from Steve that Bucky likes to sleep facing the door because it makes him feel safer.

Steve is at Natasha’s back and Bucky at her front, his long hair tickling her face, but it's nice, just the same. The two of them are radiating heat, and Natasha can't help but press her cold toes into Steve's ankles until he grumbles and says it's Bucky's turn to get the freezing feet treatment.

Steve still drools on her shoulder, like he always does. Bucky tenses and starts whimpering in the middle of the night, but Natasha puts a hand on his flesh arm and he soon relaxes. Over time, Natasha has learned that she's pretty good at calming down upset super-soldiers; it’s another useful addition to the skill set.

They wake to light streaming in through curtains they forgot to shut. One of Natasha's legs is tangled around Bucky's, and the heavy weight of Steve is pressed into her side, his head lolling against her shoulder.

“Morning,” Bucky says with a lazy smile, looking at Steve like it's Christmas.

“Morning,” Steve replies, a goofy look on his face.

Natasha figures it's time to beat a hasty retreat and tries to move, but both Steve and Bucky snuggle up to her, and she reconsiders. Steve gets JARVIS to order breakfast and they end up consuming an obscene amount of pancakes between the three of them.

***

Here's how it goes: word gets out about Natasha's occasional sleeping arrangements, and suddenly everyone wants to try out sharing a bed with two super-soldiers.

Sam shared his queen bed with Steve and Bucky enough times while they were crashing at his apartment and refused to sleep in the cold living room, so he doesn't think it's much of a big deal. At the time, Sam had grumbled about big-ass super-soldiers stealing all his blankets and crowding him to the edge of the mattress, but Natasha knows the truth: Sam never slept better with Steve and Bucky in his bed.

Clint gives it a go, and concedes both Bucky and Steve have very nice, cuddly arms - even the metal one, though Bucky gets anxious about it being too cold for anyone who isn’t Steve. Their resident archer also gets out his phone and shows Steve and Bucky all the baby pictures of Pietro, which was possibly their ulterior motive in inviting him to share their bed (Natasha has always noticed the way Steve lights up around babies; it would make sense that Bucky’s the same in that regard). It's a testament to how well Laura Barton understands her husband, the fact that her only reaction is doubled-over laughter the next time Natasha goes to the farm with Clint and tells the story.

When Thor pays a visit from Asgard, it's a tight fit for the three of them even in the huge California king, but Steve and Bucky both agree that the sort-of-god has the safest arms they've ever felt. Jane Foster looks a little put out, but Bucky just laughs and squishes up to make space for her in the bed next to Thor.

Wanda is more sceptical, but even she's won over by Bucky and Steve's thousand-thread count Italian sheets and custom-made soft mattress, agreeing that it's like sleeping in fluffy clouds. She only does it once - she's not really much of a cuddler - but Bucky and Steve aren't offended.

Maria is completely down with the idea of sleeping with cute super-soldiers; she tries it on for size, but she always gets too hot in bed, and the smothering combined heat of Steve and Bucky doesn’t work for her. She prefers sleepovers with just Natasha, when they fall asleep together watching reruns of  _MI-5_  and  _Homeland._

Everyone knows not to bother suggesting anything to Nick Fury: too weird.

Tony draws the line at super-soldier co-sleeping, but Bucky and Steve simultaneously cuddle-bomb him at the breakfast table anyway; he pretends to hate it while grinning ear to ear.

Bruce is still AWOL. It hurts, but Natasha thinks she understands now.

Of course, there are plenty of times when Steve and Bucky set the 'do not disturb' code on their door and everyone gives their bedroom a wide berth.

Natasha is happy to give Steve and Bucky their privacy: it's not like she doesn't need her own space most of the time (and she still sleeps with a concealed knife). But every once in a while, it's the nicest thing to curl up between these two impossibly burly guys who have the softest hearts, and let them hold her.


End file.
